The Doge's Palace Seen from San Giorgio Maggiore

Monet was 68 when he first saw Venice, in the autumn of 1908, and he never went back. He arrived a reluctant visitor, unsure a city so thoroughly painted had anything left for him, then stayed about ten weeks and worked in fixed shifts from fixed spots. Each morning began with this view, looking across the water from the island of San Giorgio Maggiore to the pink-and-white front of the Doge's Palace. He made roughly six versions of it, chasing the light off the lagoon at one hour of the day. He carried most of the canvases home to Giverny unfinished and worked on them there for years before showing them in Paris in 1912, by which time Alice, his wife, who had been beside him in Venice, had died.